This Is The End (2013)

You can read it as a scathing critique of self-obsessed celebrity culture, or you can take it as the payoff to a decade-long string of actors playing the same character over and over until they give up and play themselves.  But whichever way you choose to take it, This Is The End proves to be childishly crude, incredibly narcissistic, entirely self-indulgent – and, in the end, more fun than it has any right to be.

Trapped at James Franco’s house when a block party turns apocalyptic, a team of Frat Packers – Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Franco – struggle through the Biblical apocalypse while navigating their own petty differences and personal insecurities.  For example, with a demon at the door, the men argue about where to masturbate and whether anyone is entitled to a fifth of a Milky Way bar.  Satirizing the apoca-porn genre, which fetishizes death and destruction in disturbing ways (thank you, Roland Emmerich), This Is The End takes several surprisingly earnest turns, even while its leads are giggling about drinking urine.

Let’s be honest – taking This Is The End to task for its blatant and unapologetic immaturity is a little like scolding an infant for soiling himself.  Lest we forget, the writers – if indeed we can call “improvisation facilitators” such – were the savants (emphasis on the idiot) behind Superbad, a gleefully enjoyable movie that was quite obviously written by ten-year-olds.  So of course you’re going to get jokes about genitals and more weed gags than you can shake a joint at.  Of course.  And if that’s your thing, this movie has it in spades.

I’m of mixed feelings on this one.  It’s feel-good in the sense that you’ll probably end up laughing, even in spite of yourself if you go in deliberately trying not to have a good time (why you’d do that is anyone’s guess, but such people seem to exist).  Let’s be honest (the refrain of the day, it seems) – the earnest marijuana giggles Rogen delivers like a puttering engine are infectious, especially when it’s apparent that the rest of the cast are having as much fun making the film.  The cast are all fairly engaging as overblown caricatures of themselves (including an incisive turn by Jonah Hill as the “Hollywood fake” nice guy), though the standout performance award goes to Craig Robinson, who sells it to the back row with the same gregarious delight that made Hot Tub Time Machine more of a success.  There’s something about his mumbled confessions and oblivious non-sequiturs that gives him a fantastic screen presence.

But at the same time, I have trouble giving a good review to a film that contains a five-minute rape joke.  While the masturbation location conversation has a certain victimless immaturity to it, This Is The End takes on a very uncomfortable tone when Emma Watson becomes the subject of a hypothetical-rape conversation.  Though it’s played for laughs as a series of escalating misunderstandings, the scene is made all the more distasteful by McBride’s (admittedly) self-aware scummy self-caricature; and as the rape accusation is bounced around among buddies, the film’s brutal rejection of the Bechdel test is thrown into sharp relief.  I’m willing to excuse many of the film’s excesses  (including the bizarre detail that every demon has pronouncedly enormous genitals), but I’m at a loss as to why the film couldn’t have included Kristen Bell or Aubrey Plaza or – for God’s sake! – Melissa McCarthy among the survivors.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it.  There’s a certain ad hoc insanity to which you have to surrender in order to appreciate a film like this one, a go-along-for-the-ride resignation that carries with it a kind of intoxicating bliss while the lead actors bumble their way through arguments about the quotidian aspects of morning-after survival.  While certainly not for everyone, This Is The End has enough entertainment value that most people will find something worth enjoying – be it the catchy enthusiasm, the high stakes action-comedy, or even the exaggeration of excess (note the mild-mannered Michael Cera, rendered here as an oversexed addict).  A martini glass of urine never looked so funny.

This Is The End is rated R for “crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence.”  Every sexual and profane epithet you can imagine gets trotted out to excessive effect; alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine are abused throughout.  We see Cera’s rear end and the aforementioned demonic genitalia (twice), while many celebrities die in quick but intense fashion (played, you guessed it, for laughs).

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

For whatever reason (perhaps deservedly so), 1939’s The Wizard of Oz has attained a kind of untouchable status, casting a large shadow over any project attempting to approach any adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s work.  But after Disney made a pretty penny revisiting Alice in Wonderland with Tim Burton, now they’ve let Sam Raimi take a crack with Oz the Great and Powerful.

And it’s better than I was expecting.

James Franco stars as the eponymous Oscar Diggs, a selfish traveling magician who is transported from Kansas to the magical land of Oz by way of – what else? – a tornado.  Once his hot-air balloon lands, Oscar (known as “Oz”) meets a trio of witches – Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz), and Glinda (Michelle Williams) – who contend that he is the subject of a prophecy concerning the fate of Oz.  Trouble is, Oscar’s no wizard, even if his flying monkey and china doll companions believe he is...

It may be that I just had low expectations for a prequel to the aforementioned Wizard, but I found myself rather enchanted by Oz the Great and Powerful.  Raimi goes a long way to redeeming himself for Spider-Man 3 (redemption he had begun with 2009’s Drag Me to Hell), and the movie is clearly the creation of someone enamored with the art of filmmaking itself.  Of course, I’m a bit of a sucker for this kind of meta-film, but it’s particularly clever when, for example, we learn that behind the curtain lies a movie camera.

After learning that Robert Downey Jr. was under consideration for the role of Oscar, I was disappointed that it came down to James Franco, but Franco actually does a pretty good job with Oscar, capturing the bogus charisma and accompanying self-doubt that the character inhabits.  I can’t tell if Franco’s clueless perma-smile is the result of good casting or good acting, but it works in the context of the film.  He’s also an effective gateway character, his obliviousness helping us get acclimated to Oz and any dramatic ironies therein.

The witches are perhaps better cast, more interesting because of how recognizable they are from the 1939 movie.  I can’t tell if we’re meant to recognize Theodora and Evanora on sight (so it might be spoiling to say what each one does), but Kunis and Weisz are quite good as two very different kinds of witches.  But I say it’s Williams who steals the show as Glinda, adhering closely to Billie Burke’s iconic performance while adding some of the good-girl-snark that’s become popular these days (see also Peppy in The Artist). 

Younger fans will likely adore Finley the flying monkey (Zach Braff) and the China Doll (Joey King), but for me the standout feature of the film is the way that it pays tribute to some of the 1939 film’s formal attributes without retreading them.  For instance, in a shot that I wish wasn’t spoiled by the trailers, Oscar’s arrival in Oz is marked by a transition from 4:3 fullscreen to 2.35:1 widescreen.  It’s a great way to recapture the magic of 1939’s shift from sepia-tone to color for an audience already ultra-accustomed to that kind of twist (but don’t worry, you still bet a color change, too).  The film also plays up the dual-casting from the 1939 film, with Williams, Braff, and King making appearances in Kansas and Oz; it perpetuates the surreal quality of Oz while also inviting interpretation as to the reality of what’s going on.

It’s to Raimi’s credit that these formal nods never feel like obligatory deferential references.  Instead, they pay homage to the long legacy of Baum’s work while reinventing and/or reintroducing the Land of Oz to a new audience.  All told, Oz the Great and Powerful is quite good.

Oz the Great and Powerful is rated PG “for sequences of action and scary images, and brief mild language.”  This movie is quite tame, appropriate for most audiences; the flying baboons are a bit ooky, and maybe the Wicked Witch might creep some out when she appears, but all in all this is a pretty wholesome flick.

Pineapple Express (2008)

These are the cats that brought you Superbad, the poster declares, and, with much of the same cast and exactly the same sense of humor, it's not hard to believe. It's also not hard to have a great time with a movie that couldn't take itself less seriously.

I'm an unabashed fan of these Judd Apatow "Frat Pack" comedies (You Don't Mess with the Zohan aside, which I couldn't even finish), but something about the premise brought a skeptical Cinema King to the sofa for the DVD run of this one. Seth Rogen plays Dale Denton, a stoner who witnesses a murder and runs to his dealer, played in top form by James Franco, to hide out. The pair end up fleeing into the woods to avoid Ted Jones (Gary Cole, the father of film's Brady Bunch and Ricky Bobby) and his feuding henchmen (Kevin Corrigan [Cousin Sean from The Departed] and Craig Robinson [Darrell from The Office]). Meanwhile, Dale tries to save his relationship with his high school girlfriend (literally, she's 18), played by Amber Heard, though this subplot fades in and out with only a hilarious appearance by Ed Begley, Jr., as Heard's father, to redeem it.

This is another in a famously uncomplicated line of comedies from Apatow & Co., but it's one of the funniest - perhaps even more so than Superbad, which I loved. Pineapple Express takes everything I loved about Superbad - silly characters, rapid-fire dialogue, and a race to... somewhere (Franco says something along the lines of the splendid line, "I wish we could run away to... nowhere.") - and adds things Superbad didn't have, like the inimtable rising star Danny McBride and plenty of gunfights & explosions. If there's one thing I can never have too much of, it's explosions.

I praised the dialogue earlier, similar praise being offered for Rogen and Evan Goldberg's previous screenplay (Superbad, for those not paying attention), especially because this movie really finds its niche in the kind of dialogue that's becoming popular these days - quick, hysterical, and occasionally mumbling. Rogen and Granco in particular do a masterful job of handling their lines, in which their characters frequently find themselves digging themselves into a verbal hole, often ending their scenes with self-conscious reflections like "That was too far" or "I shouldn't have said that, that was mean." It's also a credit to director David Gordon Green that he knows when to cut the scenes and how best to pace them so the laughs keep coming.

There's not a whole lot more to say about Pineapple Express except that it's a lot of fun. There's no heavy message - except maybe something about the nature of friendship (platonic friendship between males being a central tenet of Apatow flicks) - so it's really about having a good time. The movie won't appeal to everyone, of course; there's bound to be accusations of it being a "stupid" movie or condemnations for its drug culture backdrop. But for those who have enjoyed the Apatow train thus far, Pineapple Express might prove addicting.

The MPAA rated Pineapple Express "R for pervasive language, drug use, sexual references and violence." The violence is exceptionally cartoonish and only occasionally bloody, and the sexual references aren't as explicit as they have been in the past. Drug use, though, is all over the film, as is crass language some might not care for.